| Issue 21 Vol I, August 15, 2006 | Archive |
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Pesticide Threaten life in Punjab
The villagers outside the school were also experiencing and complaining about breathlessness. Some women in the adjoining houses are also fainted. There was a panic in the village for a while. It was only then the villagers began to realize what happened – IT WAS A DEADLY PESTICIDE SPRAYED IN A NEARBY SUGARCANE FIELD THAT HAD AFFECTED THE VILLAGERS. Meanwhile the farm workers disclosed that it was Sudarshan Chemicals' SUTOX 100 that they had sprayed. They sprayed 15 kilos of Phorate 10G in 3.75 acres by then. The teachers acted very swiftly and informed the higher authorities and the local health officer. Within half an hour, a team of doctors reached the school and first-aid was administered. The affected students and teachers were shifted to Civil Hospital, Phillaur. A fact finding team of Kheti Virasat Mission on 26th and 28 the July visited the village to determine the extent and the nature of the problem. It met everyone, the teachers, the students, other affected villagers, sarpanch and farmers. The team spoke with the doctors in the Civil Hospital and met with the SDM, Phillaur. This report tries to give a picture of the situation based on all the information gathered from these interviews and discussions. According to the doctors at civil hospital, patients had symptoms Excessive lacrimation, excessive salivation, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, breathlessness and body aches and cramps. Hey were administered I/V fluids, Rangers Lactato, DNS and 5% Dextrose besides inj.Atropine I/M & I/V slow in clop and other required medicines. A total number of 18 persons; one adult male, seven adult females, five male children and five female children were treated. All these patients were in the hospital for three days. Two others patients Suman (18 year old young girl) and Sunita (14 year old girl) were admitted in a private nursing home at Phillaur. Sunita, a newly-married girl inhaled the toxic fumes when she had gone near the fields the next day. Her condition deteriorated soon after and she was taken to the Civil Hospital. She was then referred to a hospital in Ludhiana as her condition was found to be critical. She was there for four days. These are the 21 cases of hospitalization from the inhalation poisoning from the Phorate spraying. Some of the students and teachers were still unwell, even after six days. They had irritation in eyes up to six days, itching of the skin and general uneasiness. The teacher in the government school Bhagwan Dass was complaining of disturbance in his digestive system. He is suffering from constipation and urinary problem. Same were the complaints from Hardev Singh M 38 and Ms Asha Sharma F 34, both teachers at the government school. Bakshish Chand, 37, who is also the ex-sarpanch of the village, had similar complaints. All children and adults, exposed to PHORATE, were experiencing loss of appetite even on sixth day after exposure. Most of the children poisoned were from SC community with low incomes. About Phorate is a Class IA pesticide – which means that by World Health Organization’s classification, it is "Extremely Hazardous". Phorate 10% G falls under Class IB. The Food & Agriculture Organisation recommends that products that fall under Class IA and Class I B [Extremely Hazardous and Highly Hazardous] should not be used in developing countries given a variety of safety concerns related to these products. Phorate is an organo-phosphorus pesticide implicated in several poisoning cases earlier. For instance, in June 2001, Phorate was implicated in poisoning of workers in a tea estate and in a cardamom plantation in Karalla [1]. A 16 year old boy, Kannan, died applying Phorate on June 26th in a cardamom plantation. On the tea estate in Idukki district, on the same day, 41 people in all got affected. They all experienced acute poisoning symptoms of blurred vision, vomiting and dizziness. Mancini et al report in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2005 that acute pesticide poisoning from Organophosphorus pesticides like phorate was quite common, especially amongst low income marginal farmers in cotton growing belts of South India. There are reports that indicate that upon ingestion of organo phosphate pesticides like phorate and monocrotophos, there is also the danger of Organo Phosphate Induced Delayed Neuropathy which appears 2-4 weeks after poisoning and leads to motor paralysis [affecting the distal muscles of limbs, minimal sensory involvement and calf pain which precede its onset]. Acute poisoning due to phorate intoxication was reported from Tamluk in West Bengal in the Journal of Indian Pediatrics in 2002. Here, the affected were mainly toddlers.Significant amongst all the published studies is a report by Kashyap [1986] which reported that " Exposure of 40 formulators to a highly toxic OP insecticide (phorate) showed that over 60% of the workers suffered from toxic effects in spite of using a complete set of protective clothing" [2]. In Wayanad district of Kerala, in July 2002, children exposed to phorate fumes sprayed on banana plantations had to be admitted to hospitals. These children had experienced vomiting, dizziness and headaches. According to the first information report available with Thanal, on July 10, 2002, children arriving at the Kottathara upper primary school complained of an unbearable stench, obviously from the banana fields where workers were busy applying a mixture of fertilizer and pesticide (Phorate 10%) to the soil before planting the banana rhizomes. As the day progressed, and aided by the breeze, the smell became worse and the children started complaining of severe headache and dizziness. Meanwhile, efforts by the school authorities to stop the workers from continuing using more pesticide were met with a firm refusal. The situation soon began to get out of hand as children began fainting; gram panchayat officials were contacted for jeeps to help carry the students to hospital. On July 17, the children were back in hospital with similar complaints. Doctors confirmed that the symptoms were of acute toxic exposure. As per a study published in Economic & Political Weekly, December 2004, based on field investigations in high pesticide consumption districts in four states of India, Phorate was implicated in creating adverse health effects amongst respondents. It is estimated that 2 to 5 million people every year suffer acute poisonings all over the world and that around 40,000 people die. These are very conservative estimates and these poisonings occur mostly in the developing world, caused mainly due to OP pesticides. Many of these are Class IA and Class IB pesticides. In India, despite the fact that FAO has recommended the non-usage of Class IA and IB pesticides, a number of these products continue to be used. It is only from July 2006, after many long years of activist struggles with the company that Bayer, a market leader in pesticides in India, had stopped marketing many of its deadliest pesticides including its Class I products. In earlier studies done by groups like Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Hyderabad, many such products were implicated in acute poisoning hospitalizations and deaths [4]. Intriguingly even though the Central Insecticides Board is currently reviewing several pesticides that have been banned in other countries for their continued use in India, Phorate, Hinosan, Oxydemeton-Methyl, Methyl Parathion etc., are not amongst them! The government of India ban all class I a, I b and II pesticides, modify pesticide risk assessment procedures and bring in the precautionary principle it should promote better and safer agricultural practices including NPM approach and organic farming. The government should immediately ban aggressive marketing of pesticides and all type of agro-chemicals including all forms of advertisements and publicity of pesticides along with all incentives given to pesticide dealers' network. The Punjab Government should take up a proactive campaign on ill effects of pesticides. It should acknowledge the threat and that the problem of serious health effects with pesticides exists. |
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KHETI
Virasat Mission, a respected organisation in the field of environment
protection found Salkiana village in Jalandhar district. To be worst
affected by pollution. Its team visited the village on 21 July 2006 and
severe suffocation and breathlessness. The worst affected were the children
from the Government-run Elementary School. It was just after morning prayers
that the students started complaining of a strange smell and breathlessness.
The teachers were not aware of what happened either. Suddenly one student
fell unconscious near the hand pump and then student after student started
to faint. Within ten minutes, 16 students fainted after inhaling something
that was toxic. The teachers also experienced breathlessness. Students
complained of difficulty in breathing, severe headache, body ache,
irritation in eyes, uneasiness, dizziness and some of them started vomiting.